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Why Dilated Eye Exams Are So Important

When scheduling your eye exam, consider that you may take a dilated eye exam. While it may seem minorly inconvenient to you, as it temporarily affects your vision, a dilation exam is an important part of eye care that you need. Below is a brief guide to why it’s so important.

Ability To See More of Your Eye

During a routine eye exam without dilation, your eye doctor can check on multiple parts of your eye, such as your optic nerve and macula. Without dilation, they’re able to see the foremost parts of your eye, allowing them to detect potential issues. However, when your pupils aren’t dilated, the light reaching the back of your eye only illuminates a small part of your retina. Without full illumination, your eye doctor will miss issues.

The answer to this is a dilation solution, enlarging your pupil to allow more light into your eye. The solution will be administered as eye drops, taking several minutes to be effective. Once your eyes are dilated, the doctor will have a clear view of the back of your eye, as well as a wider field of view of other parts of your eye, including your optic nerve.

More Accurate Ocular Disease Diagnosis

Because of the clearer and wider view your doctor has of your eye in a dilated eye exam, they can accurately diagnose many different ocular diseases that otherwise would have been missed. Age-related macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy, for instance, both require a dilation exam, as a full view of the retina is needed for diagnosis. Glaucoma and other ocular tumors need to be diagnosed and monitored this way, too, to better see the optic nerve and growth of the malignancy. Injuries directly to the retina, such as a retinal detachment or retinal tear, also need dilation to be accurately diagnosed